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Electron 14.0.0

· 6 min read
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Electron 14.0.0 has been released! It includes upgrades to Chromium 93 and V8 9.3. We've added several API updates, bug fixes, and general improvements. Read below for more details!

The Electron team is excited to announce the release of Electron 14.0.0! You can install it with npm via npm install electron@latest or download it from our releases website. Continue reading for details about this release and please share any feedback you have!

Notable Changes​

Electron Release Cadence Change​

Beginning in September 2021 with Electron 15, Electron will release a new major stable version every 8 weeks. You can read the full details here. Electron 15 will begin beta on September 1, 2021 and stable release will be on September 21, 2021. You can find Electron's public timeline here. Additionally, Electron will be changing supported versions from latest three versions to latest four versions until May 2022. See see our versioning document for more detailed information about versioning in Electron.

Stack Changes​

Highlight Features​

  • Default Changed: nativeWindowOpen now defaults to true. (see docs)
  • Child windows no longer inherit BrowserWindow construction options from their parents. #28550
  • Added new session.storagePath API to get the path on disk for session-specific data. #28665
  • Added process.contextId used by @electron/remote. #28007
  • Added experimental cookie encryption support behind an Electron Fuse. #29492

See the 14.0.0 release notes for a full list of new features and changes.

Breaking Changes​

Below are breaking changes introduced in Electron 14. More information about these and future changes can be found on the Planned Breaking Changes page.

Removed: app.allowRendererProcessReuse​

The app.allowRendererProcessReuse property has been removed as part of our plan to more closely align with Chromium's process model for security, performance and maintainability.

For more detailed information see #18397.

Removed: Browser Window Affinity​

The affinity option when constructing a new BrowserWindow has been removed as part of our plan to more closely align with Chromium's process model for security, performance and maintainability.

For more detailed information see #18397.

API Changed: window.open()​

The optional parameter frameName no longer sets the title of the window. This behavior now follows the specification described by the native documentation for the windowName parameter.

If you were using this parameter to set the title of a window, you can instead use the win.setTitle(title) method.

Removed: worldSafeExecuteJavaScript​

worldSafeExecuteJavaScript has been removed with no alternative. Please ensure your code works with this property enabled. It has been enabled by default since Electron 12.

You will be affected by this change if you use either webFrame.executeJavaScript or webFrame.executeJavaScriptInIsolatedWorld. You will need to ensure that values returned by either of those methods are supported by the Context Bridge API as these methods use the same value passing semantics.

Default Changed: nativeWindowOpen defaults to true​

Prior to Electron 14, window.open was by default shimmed to use BrowserWindowProxy. This meant that window.open('about:blank') did not work to open synchronously scriptable child windows, among other incompatibilities. nativeWindowOpen is no longer experimental, and is now the default.

See the documentation for window.open in Electron for more details.

Removed: BrowserWindowConstructorOptions inheriting from parent windows​

Prior to Electron 14, windows opened with window.open would inherit BrowserWindow constructor options such as transparent and resizable from their parent window. Beginning with Electron 14, this behavior has been removed and windows will not inherit any BrowserWindow constructor options from their parents.

Instead, explicitly set options for the new window with setWindowOpenHandler:

webContents.setWindowOpenHandler((details) => {
  return {
    action: 'allow',
    overrideBrowserWindowOptions: {
      // ...
    },
  };
});

Removed: additionalFeatures​

The deprecated additionalFeatures property in the new-window and did-create-window events of WebContents has been removed. Since new-window uses positional arguments, the argument is still present, but will always be the empty array []. (Note: the new-window event itself is already deprecated and has been replaced by setWindowOpenHandler.) Bare keys in window features will now present as keys with the value true in the options object.

// Removed in Electron 14
// Triggered by window.open('...', '', 'my-key')
webContents.on('did-create-window', (window, details) => {
  if (details.additionalFeatures.includes('my-key')) {
    // ...
  }
});

// Replace with
webContents.on('did-create-window', (window, details) => {
  if (details.options['my-key']) {
    // ...
  }
});

Removed: remote module​

Deprecated in Electron 12, the remote module has now been removed from Electron itself and extracted into a separate package, @electron/remote. The @electron/remote module bridges JavaScript objects from the main process to the renderer process. This lets you access main-process-only objects as if they were available in the renderer process. This is a direct replacement for the remote module. See the module's readme for migration instructions and reference.

API Changes​

  • Added BrowserWindow.isFocusable() method to determine whether a window is focusable. #28642
  • Added WebFrameMain.visibilityState instance property. #28706
  • Added disposition, referrer and postBody to the details object passed to the window open handler registered with setWindowOpenHandler. #28518
  • Added process.contextId used by @electron/remote. #28007
  • Added experimental cookie encryption support behind an Electron Fuse. #29492
  • Added missing resourceType conversions for webRequest listener details: font, ping, cspReport, media, webSocket. #30050
  • Added new session.storagePath API to get the path on disk for session-specific data. #28665
  • Added support for Windows Control Overlay on macOS. #29986
  • Added support for directing Chromium logging to a file with --log-file=.../path/to/file.log. Also, it's now possible to enable logging from JavaScript by appending command-line switches during the first JS tick. #29963
  • Added support for the des-ede3 cipher in node crypto. #27897
  • Added a ContextBridgeMutability feature that allows context bridge objects to be mutated. #27348

Removed/Deprecated Changes​

The following APIs have been removed or are now deprecated:

  • The remote module has been removed after being deprecated in Electron 12. #25734
  • Child windows no longer inherit BrowserWindow construction options from their parents. #28550
  • Removed deprecated additionalFeatures property from new-window and did-create-window WebContents events. #28548
  • Removed the deprecated app.allowRendererProcessReuse and BrowserWindow affinity options. #26874
  • The submitURL option for crashReporter.start is no longer a required argument when uploadToServer is false. #28105

End of Support for 11.x.y​

Electron 11.x.y has reached end-of-support as per the project's support policy. Developers and applications are encouraged to upgrade to a newer version of Electron.

What's Next​

In the short term, you can expect the team to continue to focus on keeping up with the development of the major components that make up Electron, including Chromium, Node, and V8. Although we are careful not to make promises about release dates, our plan is release new major versions of Electron with new versions of those components approximately quarterly.

For information on planned breaking changes in upcoming versions of Electron, see our Planned Breaking Changes.